There is incentive to get better. The feeling of seeing that I'm getting better is the incentive to keep playing this game for me. Even if nobody else cared, I do care about myself getting better and that's all that matters to me.

I don't think that making the game more accessible for new players would help very much if we overdo it too much. What happens is that people will pick up this game, get into it a bit, and then they realize that it really just isn't their thing. I know that when I started playing this game, even though I sucked dick and got destroyed by any decent player, I didn't just give up with the idea that this game is stupid. I wanted to get better, so I kept playing. This is something that a lot of people just don't have the time and/or motivation to do.
The truth is that we're playing an extremely niche genre of game. Almost all of the disappearing new players don't just stop playing because it's not holding their hand enough, it's just that ultimately, they don't like this type of game. No amount of hand-holding is going to change that.
In fact, it's possible that by adding so many hand holding features, the target audience that this game goes for will actually get pushed away. I know I nearly stopped playing back in early access when item timers were default on, simply because I didn't like how much it took one of the skill factors out of the game.
(though I do agree that some things should not be hard to figure out, like the magic number of RA you can have max to pick up a YA/GA)

For point #3, I noticed that often the server has to download the map from the workshop, and this can take a very long time sometimes. If you wait long enough, it'll eventually go through. I've received at least 3 free wins for waiting longer than my opponent.
I don't get why the server has to download the map from the workshop though, shouldn't they always have the map on the server already?

I've just gotten two time penalties for seemingly nothing. The second one after my opponent disconnects mid-game. I haven't even gotten close to the disconnect button in all my 5 games.
What?
EDIT: yo another time penalty after playing a game to completion. Am I not allowed to play more than 3 games or something? wtf

I think that, if we're assuming that everyone is superhuman and can see the difference between 1 unit, it could get slightly messy if the player that ends up getting the red gets damaged in that small timeframe.
I could also imagine a situation where two players are standing up against each other for about a second, being equidistant to the item. What happens then? Will the item just sit there, not getting picked up? I can already see the bug reports rolling in

As the title says, when both players pick up an item at the exact same time, the lowest client index gets the item. This is mostly a problem if both players are on an item pedestal as it spawns.
I think a better way to handle this edge case is to give the item to whoever is closer to the center point of the item.